Given such internal conditions in Russia, for its proletariat as the ruling class, the principal task of the moment is the correct determination and implementation of those measures which are necessary for leadership of the peasantry, for a firm alliance with it, for a long series of gradual transitions to large-scale socialized machine agriculture. This task is especially difficult in Russia both by virtue of the backwardness of our country and as a consequence of the extreme devastation wrought upon it by seven years of imperialist and civil war. But apart from such particular circumstances, this task belongs to the category of the most difficult tasks of socialist construction, which will confront all capitalist countries — with perhaps the sole exception of England. However, even with respect to England, one cannot forget that while in it the class of small tenant farmers is particularly small in number, on the other hand the percentage of those living in a petty-bourgeois manner among workers and employees is exceptionally high as a consequence of the actual enslavement of hundreds of millions of people in the colonies "belonging" to England.

Therefore, from the standpoint of the development of the world proletarian revolution as a unified process, the significance of the epoch which Russia is experiencing consists in this: to practically test and verify the policy of the proletariat holding state power in its hands with regard to the petty-bourgeois masses.